Special Report: The Smartphone Generation - Cell Phones and Children

GREENSBORO, N.C. - We can't seem to put our smartphones down. You might be reading this article on a smartphone right now. If you have children, they might know how to operate your phone better than you do.

Keeping your children away from smartphones was a lot easier just a few years ago. There were a lot fewer of them. Now, you can't go anywhere without seeing one. Parents are wrestling with how to adapt to this digital world.

Melissa Davis has her hands full with a three-month-old and a three-year-old.

"Usually, I want them to play outside and interact with other people," Davis said.

When many of us think about our childhood, we picture playing outside, running on the playground and using our imagination. Fast-forward to today, and more and more children and spending hours staring at screens.

"What is this world coming to when, at three-years-old, she's operating, essentially a hand-held computer, a cell phone? At three-years-old, I was playing in the sandbox," Davis said.

Smart cell phones are still fairly new technology. Experts still don't know all the long-term effects of letting your child play with your phone.

"Nobody has written the bible about how to do this," Dr. Kathleen Clake Pearson, Chair of the North Carolina Pediatric Society Committee of Media, said. "How are those screens affecting the biology of that brain structure and the circuits of the brain? We don't know that yet."

But, again, smart phones are almost impossible to avoid.

"You can say what you want to, but you will give up your phone to keep a child quiet for five minutes," social media expert Kristen Daukas said.

Whether your child is still in diapers or learning to drive, experts say it's important for parents to develop a plan for cell phone use.

"It's a part of life. To say that they can't do it is unrealistic, I think, in today's time. But, you do need to set parameters and you do need to set limitations," Daukas said.

"Seeing kids on a playground playing games on a phone...I just think it's so sad. They don't take in as much," parent Ashley Langley said.

Langley's daughter, Emma-Kate, might be young, but she's old enough to watch what mom does.

"I notice she will go to my phone and pick it up and push the buttons. That's not because she knows what to do with it. It's because she's seen me. It's a reminder that we need to pay attention to what we're doing," Langley said.

Langley and her husband have already talked about what they're going to do when Emma-Kate asks for her own cell phone.

"She can have one when she drives. We don't care if she says, 'Suzie has one.' They don't need it," she said.